Trial Period
by NeverPartOfThePlan
Summary: Can Helena G. Wells get reinstated as a Warehouse agent and get the girl of her dreams...again? Her only hope lies with the one man who knows what actually happened during Sykes' final "Stand". But how can Artie reveal the truth to the Regents (and Myka) without compromising his own secret? Takes place after 4.01. Bering & Wells...eventually.
1. Chapter 1

**"Trial Period"**

_A Warehouse 13 Fanfic_

Summary: Can Helena G. Wells get reinstated as a Warehouse agent and get the girl of her dreams...again? Her only hope lies with the one man who knows the truth about what actually happened during Sykes' final "Stand". But how can Artie reveal the truth without compromising his own secret?

Setting: Post 4.01, but before 4.02.

**DISCLAIMER:**** I do not own Warehouse 13. But then again, you can probably tell that from the fact that Bering and Wells isn't canon. And I mean ACTUAL canon, not subtext.**

* * *

**Chapter 1**

Helena G. Wells was shoved unceremoniously into the back of a black van by two of the Regents' men. It seemed that she was always going to be treated like the pathetic criminal she had once been. She had said she was doing the Earth a favor, ridding it of humanity, but in the end, did it make her any better than the men who had killed her daughter? The answer that Helena had come to, after so many endless...were they hours? Days? Years? floating in the endless darkness of the unactivated holo-sphere, was no. In the end, she was no better than any of the people she had sought to destroy. There was only one thing that could possibly make her better, and that was the fact that she had recognized it.

Perhaps her actions were not her fault. She was only driven to them by unbearable pain. That's what the Regents' psychologist had told her, until one day she had snapped. "There is no one on this planet who can help me!" she had screamed at the shrink. "So stop trying!" Ever determined to prove the great H.G. Wells wrong, Kosan had delivered the sphere to Myka against the orders of the other eleven Regents.

Myka. A living, breathing example of the pain she had caused. Myka, the woman she loved more than anything in the world. Myka, broken deep inside by Helena's betrayal. And yet Myka, who always saw the good in people, and who had convinced H.G. that there was hope left for the world. Hope left for Helena herself. In a way, it was fitting: their fatal flaws counteracted each other. Myka was too trusting, too optimistic, too generous in her judgement of people; Helena was too dark, too pessimistic, too unwilling to see good for what it was. They had healed each other.

* * *

The van drove for what seemed like hours. They had to be out of the state by now. Finally, the door opened and H.G. was pulled out. It was late at night. She could see mountains around her, but not for long. She was led into a door that opened into the side of a hill. It was a very familiar door. This was the place she had been brought after Yellowstone. But this time, instead of being taken into the dark depths of the Regent Headquarters, she was led down a hallway to a rather plain, whitewashed, hotel-like room. Still, it was much better than the cold, hard cell she had occupied on her first visit. The faceless guard told her that they would come for her in the morning. Until then, there was nothing for her to do but go to sleep.

* * *

**A/N: I know it starts slow but it gets better next chapter, I promise. Just keep reading.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: "A Second Chance"**

H.G. awoke to shouting outside her door.

"What the hell do you mean, put her back?" said a voice that sounded rather like Artie's.

"H.G. Wells cannot be trusted to return to the Warehouse," said Kosan's calm, deep voice. "And as you know well, no one with such intimate knowledge of the Warehouse can be released back into the world."

"I can personally vouch for her," replied Artie. "She has been completely rehablitated and is fit for reinstatement."

"I was going to give the go-ahead for a trial period," said Kosan, "but I can't get any of the others to authorize even a temporary license for her. She's already been reinstated once, Agent Nielsen. You must understand our hesitation."

"What if you were able to do a trial period without any danger of harm?" asked Artie. "What if she was given the opportunity to prove her complete loyalty to the Warehouse—without harm as well, because when I say complete…" He trailed off, but Kosan knew what he meant.

"I don't see how that's possible," replied the Regent.

"But you will," said Artie. "They should be here any second."

"Who?" asked Kosan.

He was interrupted by the buzzing of his Farnsworth. "Sir, Mrs. Frederic is here with Douglas Fargo and a couple of Eureka techs," said the guard on the other end. "Oh, and a rather large box."

"I still don't quite understand this," Kosan said.

"Tell them to bring it to the room where you have the time machine," said Artie. Mr. Kosan relayed the instructions before following Artie to said room.

Naturally, Helena's curiosity was piqued by this conversation, but she found the door to her room locked. She sighed. A prisoner again—no, a prisoner still.

* * *

It wasn't for a while that they came to get her. In the room she was taken to was an interesting-looking contraption consisting of a piece of her time machine (oh well, the time circuits were fried anyway), the sphere tha held the Janus coin, and a computer terminal. Also in the room were Artie, Kosan, Mrs. Frederic, and a bespectacled, slightly nerdy young man she assumed was Fargo.

Artie explained the setup to her. The pieces from the time machine would transport her consciousness, not into the past, but into Fargo's VR game, which had been modified to be a controllable from the outside. The Janus coin would record what happened. The new system could simulate anything and everything. They would use it to determine whether H.G. was trustworthy. "I don't pretend to understand the specifics," he said, "but I think it's your only shot."

"Thank you," she said. "I don't deserve this second chance." There. That was what a sincerely sorry person would say, right? It was also what she believed, although her ego was too big to actually admit it to herself.

She lay down in the time machine. As Mrs. Frederic placed the strap on her forehead, she said, "By the way, when you are in the simulator, you will not know you're in a simulation. It will feel real."

Kosan hit the button.

The world began to spin.

And everything went black.

* * *

**A/N: Guess what the simulation's going to be...**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: "The Simulation"**

"What do we do now?" asked Fargo. "I may be controlling this thing, but you guys have to tell me what to tell it."

"Start with the moment Helena was brought back to her physical body," said Artie. It was the first time he had called her by her first name. "Oh wait, you don't know about that. Anyway, start with a vault..."

Fargo translated Artie's description into code, and everyone watched as a world was built before their eyes in real time on the screen. "Oh, I almost forgot," said Fargo, and switched on the Janus coin sphere. Suddenly the world he had been building became infinitely more real, in three vivid dimensions.

He pressed Enter, and the simulation began.

At least in the beginning, the simulation was identical to the events of the past few days. H.G's actions and words, too, were identical. It really was her in there. Artie struggled to process this thought.

An hour. Two hours. Then three, then four, then five. The simulation dragged on. Artie and Mrs. Frederic took turns instructing Fargo, who himself alternated with another Eureka techie on the simulator controls. The time machine had the capability to upload a person's consciousness for 22 hours and 19 minutes. They were in no hurry.

However, when they passed the 22 hour mark and nothing had changed from the real version of events, Kosan began to grow impatient. "Here's the deal, Agent Nielsen," he said. "This was a great idea that you don't seem to be executing very well. We already know what happened the day before yesterday."

"Wait and see," said Artie patiently. "You might want to go get the other Regents. Things are about to get interesting."

Slowly but surely the other eleven Regents filed into the room. A few minutes after the last one entered, Artie said to the assembled crowd, "Now is the moment when we defused the bomb in real life." Then to Fargo: "Don't defuse the bomb."

What happened next surprised everyone except Artie. Helena's resourcefulness was not what was shocking. What was shocking was the fact that she was willing to sacrifice herself to save the other agents. Death was the ultimate commitment. No one who was only rejoining the Warehouse as part of the plan would ever die for it. No, Helena was telling the truth when she said the Warehouse was the only family she had left.

What surprised even Artie was the way himself and Pete dropped out of the hologram in the final moments of H.G's life, leaving only her and Myka.

In the simulation, Helena began to say something they couldn't hear. "Back up two seconds with magnified sound," he told Fargo.

"I love you," said Helena's hologram. There was only one person to whom she could have been saying it. This surprised no one except Artie.

"Insert the smell of apples," said Kosan. "So she knows she passed."

Fargo did so and surely enough, H.G's hologram sniffed slightly and said, "I smell apples."

In the hologram, Myka looked down, unable to watch Helena die.

In real life, Artie found himself doing the same thing.

And then H.G's image was consumed in holographic fire.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: "Fire, Death, and Apples"**

The entire room waited, in stunned silence. To many of them, it was basically like a movie. A 3-D, extremely lifelike movie with people they knew, but a movie nonetheless. It was a simulation. Even to the Regents, it was a test. A clever system to see if Helena was "worthy". One did not empathize with a hologram.

There was only one person to whom it was real, horribly, vividly, real. He was the only one who knew that while this was all a perversely realistic video game, these same events had happened in real life once before. In the old timeline, her sacrifice had meant something. It seemed cruel, just a bit, to make her go through it again, but at least she would not remember it. In the old timeline, though, they could not have pressed a button and woken her up. The way things had been, she was gone forever.

And that was why a single tear rolled down Artie's cheek. He wiped it away quickly and shook his head to clear it of the images, trying to avoid showing weakness in front of his superiors. Especially here, where such a reaction might betray the secret that he had modified the time stream—something that, according to legend, divided a man's soul.

Finally, Mr. Kosan said, "Shall we take a voice vote on Ms. Wells's reinstatement? All in favor say 'Aye'…" Every single person in the room, Regent or not, said "Aye".

"All opposed?" continued Kosan. Absolutely no one said anything. Several of the Regents looked at Kosan as if he were crazy.

"Very well, it is unanimous," he said. "Mr. Fargo, please wake her up."

No sooner had Fargo pressed the button than H.G. woke up. There was a ghostly pain, a burning sensation covering her entire body, that faded away rapidly. The memory of what had happened seemed forever just out of reach—the further she stretched to get it, the further it receded.

"What do you remember?" asked Mrs. Frederic, seeing the confused look on Helena's face.

"Fire," she replied, grabbing desperately at the few residual memories that remained. "Death. Apples, for some reason. The look in Myka's eyes. Nothing else." She unfastened the strap and sat up slowly.

I guess that's a side effect of using the Janus coin as a recording device," said Mrs. Frederic. "You forgot everything, but we do have it here if you'd like to see it."

"Just as well," remarked H.G., "I don't think I want to remember it. I didn't survive," she said matter-of-factly. "Did I."

"You did not," said Kosan. "However, that was nothing but a simulation. In real life you are not only alive but also the first agent in Warehouse history to be reinstated twice." She stood up and he shook her hand. "Congratulations, Agent Wells."

"Thank you," she said. "Sir," she added. The reinstatement was hardly news to her. It's not like she had any more Master Plans or any other reason to be anything but a loyal agent. Then again, on the other hand, all of her reasons for wanting to rejoin the Warehouse were the same reasons she had given last time. They hadn't started out true; they had become true. Funny how that worked.

She was too lost in thought to hear what Kosan said next. "However, you will not be rejoining the main Warehouse team, at least not immediately," he said again when she asked him to repeat it.

"Why not?" asked H.G. She was rather upset with Kosan for this statement. The other agents were her only family. She could have cared less about her badge; she just wanted to have her family back.

"We have some...other things that need doing," said one of the other Regents. "We feel you will enjoy them. You will be able to work at the Warehouse and stay at Leena's some of the time, but you won't be going on missions with the rest of them."

"So I've got desk duty." Helena was indignant.

"Who said anything about desks?" said Mrs. Frederic. "Your assignment will be nothing but endless wonder, trust us." She handed H.G. an envelope. "Don't open this yet. And it is, of course, top secret. You are dismissed. Agent Nilesen, please return her to Leena's."

H.G. turned to leave, but Fargo caught her at the door and handed her the sphere from the Janus coin. "This is a recording of everything that happened during the test," he said. "Tragic ending aside, there are some rather entertaining moments on here. That incident with the rigging rope... I'm still not quite sure that actually happened, and isn't just a product of Artie's imagination. It seems your boss may be a closet pervert."

"No, it actually happened," said Helena with a laugh, "and believe me, I doubt anyone had more 'dirty'—" she held up air quotes, hoping she was using the term correctly; English in this century was weird "—thoughts about it then I did. Besides, if that simulation was based on what Artie saw, then he wasn't even around for any of the good parts." The expression on Fargo's face was not unlike Pete's expression when she had said that many of her lovers were men. _What is it with men?_ thought Helena. Why do they find that so fascinating?

* * *

**A/N: The thing with Fargo at the end was an attempt at comic relief, if you're wondering. I figured we all need some at this point. Oh, and next chapter we finally get to see Myka! This story doesn't have a "Bering & Wells" tag in the summary for nothing.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: "Welcome Home"**

**Sorry about how late it is, but it's getting to be time for finals and so I don't have hardly any time to write anymore.**

* * *

Myka glanced briefly up from her book, thinking she had heard a noise. It was an uncharacteristically quiet day at the B&B, and for good reason: Steve was dead, Claudia had run away, Helena had been taken again. Artie had gone to try to persuade the Regents to reinstate her. Probably futile, considering what had happened the last time she had been reinstated… That was an eternity ago, Myka thought. And I believed in her all along. She may have proved me wrong, but I was right.

Just then Myka found out what the noise was: Artie had returned. He opened the door and stuck his head in.

"How'd it go?" asked Myka. Artie put a finger to his lips and mouthed "You'll see".

"Pete!" called Artie. "I have a job for you!"

Pete came trudging down the stairs. "What?" he said, but Artie pulled him out the door and out of sight. As soon as he had done so, none other than H.G. Wells stepped out from behind the wall and into the foyer.

Myka looked up in shock. She dropped her book and ran into the other agent's waiting arms.

"I thought they had…taken you again," she said in a voice barely above a whisper.

"No darling," replied Helena, "I've been reinstated. Again."

"You'd think they'd learn their lesson," said Myka jokingly.

"I think they have," said H.G. more seriously. "At least they had the decency to wipe my memory of the things they did to me to test my trustworthiness."

"What did they do to you?" asked Myka. "Cause I swear, WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON THEM—" Myka's voice rose and she took a step back from Helena as she became increasingly angry. The Regents infuriated Myka for many reasons. Their treatment of Helena for one, but also their overall arrogance and general coldness. They were the utterly aloof rulers, having very little compassion for those they ruled. "They only seem to ever think about the Warehouse—"

"Myka darling?" said H.G. Myka hadn't realized she was beginning to think aloud. "Don't get angry. They're only doing their jobs. That's their job: to protect the Warehouse."

"Sorry," said Myka, sinking back into the other woman's arms. "You don't know what it's been like. I really did think you were gone forever. I don't know why, but I have...an inkling of a shadow of a memory, a horrible memory. I guess it was just a dream, but I remember, very faintly, you dying. I guess it was just a nightmare.

"I guess," said Helena. But a brief, frightening thought flashed through her mind: could Myka's dream and her simulation be related? Was it a vision of the future that Artie had used? Or could it be something from the past? No, that was impossible, she was alive and well.

* * *

_As soon as Pete had exited the B&B, he saw H.G. hiding around the corner. Artie quickly silenced him, but as soon as H.G. entered the house he said to Artie, "What exactly is going on? What's she doing here?"_

_"Helena has been reinstated as an agent," said Artie. Pete almost protested but a glare from Artie silenced him. "Anyway, I wanted to give her some time to herself."_

_"Myka's still in there," Pete said._

_"Fine, some time with Myka and without you. Because we all know about what happened last time."_

_"True, I'd rather not end up on the ceiling again." During H.G's brief first reinstatement, Pete had made one too many innuendos about her and Myka (though only slightly more than Helena herself had) and H.G. had handed him an innocuous-looking chunk of metal. Turns out, the metal was cavorite. Pete ended up having his gravitational field reversed, effectively suspending him from the B&B's living room ceiling. She had taken him down...eventually, and with a promise never to talk about her and Myka again._

_"So what was the job?" asked Pete. "Oh wait, there was none."_

_"Correct," said Artie, "but as long as you're out here, you might as well help me pick up some new parts for the Neutralizer Dispersal System."_

_Pete groaned but followed Artie anyway._

* * *

Suddenly Myka realized just how close she was to Helena. Their faces were separated by mere centimeters, and Myka suddenly felt an old desire flare up again. It was a desire she had felt before, but had never acted on. She hadn't tried to deny it, just pretended it wasn't there.

But it was there.

And now it was safe to act.

At least as safe as love would ever be, especially given the nature of their work and the fact that many, many people in the world (thankfully none at the Warehouse) would never be able to see past the fact that they were both women. But that was good enough. It would have to be.

Myka took a tiny breath and closed the remaining distance between them.

The instant their lips touched Helena kissed her back with a passion that can only come from so many years of pent-up emotion. Their sexual tension had finally tensed so much it broke, and at the same time the dam each of them had constructed in their minds, simply to prevent their feelings from hurting them, simply disappeared. Not broke, just disappeared. There was no more need for it, no more pain. (Or so they thought.)

Neither of them could have said for sure how long the kiss lasted. It could have been ten seconds or an hour—no, no one could hold their breath that long, could they? Either way it wasn't long enough before the need for air drove them apart.

And so for the next few hours, they talked, laughed, read (mostly it was Helena reading and Myka simply listening to H.G's oh-so-heavenly accent), kissed, and simply enjoyed the amazing feeling of finally being together. It was that way until Pete and Artie came back, and really, what could they do to upset the mood?

* * *

**Guess that's as good a stopping point as any.**


End file.
